The Whole House Shakes
by Courtney Brown
The whole house shakes when the washing machine is in the spin cycle. She sits on the bed and it moves beneath her. She does a lot of laundry these days. If she is upset, she spends hours folding clothes, just to do it perfectly. It calms her. She likes how dependable it is. She sorts them into three categories: whites, colors, darks. Then, into the washing machine they go and turn around. Sometimes, she stays and watches the soap suds splash against the window. And then when they come out of the dryer, they are all warm and soft against her face and her hands.
There are always stains on her son's sheets now. Every week she sees crusted yellow all over them. He's almost as tall as she is, so she has to be careful she doesn't mix together any clothes that could belong to either of them. Sometimes, she runs all his clothes twice through the washing cycle just to make sure everything is clean. He leaves wet towels from the shower all strewn about with his clothes, and they smell like mildew when she picks them off the floor.
He doesn't like her in his room anymore. When she tries to go in to collect the laundry, if he is there, he will yell at her. Then, he throws dirty clothes in a pile outside his door. All she sees is a skinny arm and a fist. His socks get everywhere. They skid into the hallways; they stumble down the stairs. He slams the door when he's done. He says, "Jeez, Mom!"
Her husband is much neater. Everything goes in the basket. He folds his pants before he throws them in. She wonders if he thinks that wrinkles could sink so far into the fabric that she will never be able to get them out. He holds her almost the same way, as he if is afraid she will wrinkle.
She doesn't feel like squirming when he holds her. She used to hate that those minutes after sex when her neck would be awkward and aching against some guy's armpit. Her shoulders would ache. It was over and she wanted to go to the bathroom. They would put their arms around her shoulders in movie theaters and other people's couches. She'd get this sick feeling in her stomach. She never pushed them away.
Its like that with Jack. He is not like her husband. He is too angular to be comfortable, and he doesn't hold her for long. About five minutes and he's up and moving again. She wonders if he counts the seconds before he can leave. She said once, "Its okay to let go, you know." He didn't know what she was talking about.
She offers to do his laundry, and he rolls his eyes at her. "Don't mother me," he says. But she just wants to wash more clothes. His clothes are different. They have ink stains on the cuffs. They smell like smoke. Even his hands are stained yellow with nicotine. When she is through, his shirts are spotless and everything smells like lilac and chemicals.
Once, her son watched her trying to get the ink stains out. He asked for his allowance with his hand open. She gave him a lot of money. She bent her body over the ironing board. He was getting ready to go the movies. She forgot to ask him when he was coming back. All night she stayed up, anxious, until he came home. "Jeez, Mom," he said. He snorted and wiped the hair out of his face. It was too long.
She had imagined a car wreck, a drug overdose, drinking and driving. She studies him, now, as if she could see him through a microscope. He smells like perfume sometimes. Is it his cologne or does he have a girlfriend? Her husband says, "It'll be alright, Dora. He's a good kid." Then, she rests her chin on his shoulder so that she feels his breath moving against her cheek.
Jack asks, "What did you do, then?" She remembers being miserable. She remembers her favorite black dress, how she wore it every week at school. She didn't wash it herself. She had it dry-cleaned. They put it on a nice, neat hanger. They attached the receipt with a pin.
She says, "Oh, Jack!" because she doesn't want to talk about it.
She wore that dress until it was thread-bare. Her mother threw it in the garbage can one day while she was away at school. She found it later that night, when she took out the trash.